Posts tagged ‘Internet’

From the outset, we have sought to instill a love of literature in our little man while limiting Munchkin’s screen time. Given how much time we spend in front of our laptops, the latter was bound to be a bit of a quixotic quest. At three, Munchkin is by no means immune to the draw of the bright screen; the educational series of Daniel Tiger videos is his current obsession, and he wheedles his way to watching a video most days. Even so, we spend considerably more time reading to him each day than he spends watching videos, and that is one victory of which we are proud.

Up in the dead of the night — alarm set for 4 am, but too much nervous energy to sleep. 2:45am. Election coverage on one browser, the Penguins game on another. The first results start rolling in. Kentucky. Indiana. Both red, as expected, but also a bit redder than predicted by the polls. Too early to tell anything other than that the final tally will be close.

A couple of years ago, one of our photographs nearly wound up hanging in Chicago’s Field Museum. Another photograph was included in a Polish publication aimed at educating children about various indigenous dwellings around the world. This year, another artist reached out to us to ask for permission to use one of our photographs for a project that represents the coolest use of our work to date.

Munchkin had been such a joy the last few months that his newest cranky phase caught us a little off-guard. We have heard of the terrible twos, of course, but the term seemed to imply that we would be in the clear for another eight months or so — at least until he turns two. Not so. This past month, we have run the full gamut of emotions from bemusement to frustration as Munchkin’s little tantrums have increased in both frequency and intensity.

We had planned to spend last weekend in Ukraine. There was an indoor frisbee tournament at a sports complex outside Odessa, the seaside Ukrainian resort town that is just across Moldova’s south-eastern border. While D played, S intended to do some touristing with Munchkin, with the hopes that D would save a little energy to go out with her in the evenings. Among its attractions, Odessa has an excellent restaurant scene and a well-regarded opera house. Unfortunately, an administrative snafu (emphasis on the last two letters) forced us to cancel the trip just hours before our planned departure.

There is a great scene in the director’s cut of Pulp Fiction that did not make it to the big screen when the film premiered in the United States. At her apartment, Uma Thurman greets John Travolta with a small hand-held camera and proceeds to interview him before they go out to dinner and dance that memorable twist routine. In an interview, Quentin Tarantino said that he omitted the scene not because he didn’t like it — on the contrary, it sheds light on some subsequent dialogue that otherwise has no context — but rather because there were too many other movies in the early 90’s that featured similar on-camera, confession-style interviews. He did not want to be part of a fad, even if he had thought up the idea first, so he axed the scene.

Before introducing solid foods, S did some cursory online research. What she found was a battleground between parents who advocate for baby-led weaning and those who favor the more traditional, spoon-fed approach. As is typical of parenting disagreements, this debate is characterized by impassioned exhortations from parents and experts on both sides who fervently believe that theirs is the only right approach.

A few years ago we posted a round-up of our favorite bizarre search terms that had led people to click on our blog, and we thought it would be fun to revisit the theme. Our blog has been around long enough now that we can only view the top hits while thousands of search terms are omitted, meaning that likely we are missing some real gems. Even so, here are a few terms that caught our eye or gave us a chuckle.

At times we struggle with the identity of our blog. Many posts are born of a desire to include our faraway friends and families in our lives, while others are the result of pent-up creative energy in search of an outlet. Even those posts, however, do not aspire to greatness or widespread recognition. We are happy if people derive enjoyment from the photographs and stories we share, but we don’t really think of what we post as “art,” so it is flatteringly disorienting when other people view it as such.

In one of our wildest fantasies, we are alone in a spacious hotel room. The king-size bed beckons with fluffy pillows and soft, downy, freshly laundered sheets. We peel back the covers, disrobe, embrace, and fall into a deep, dreamless, undisturbed sleep. After nearly four months, with Munchkin almost on the cusp of sleep training, such are the fanciful daydreams of new parents.